Boss of the U.P.

RAILROADS

Into the presidency of the rich Union Pacific, third largest U.S. railroad, stepped a railroader's railroader. At 53, tall, taciturn Arthur E. Stoddard had reached the top, after a typical railroader's climb from the very bottom.

At the age of eleven, Nebraska-born Art Stoddard went to Texas with his father, a grading contractor who was helping to build the Rock Island Line. Art got a job as water boy at 25-c- a day. He worked on railroads on & off while finishing school, joined the U.P. as a shop helper. After a World War I stint as a Navy radio operator, he worked up through U.P.'s ranks as a telegrapher, train dispatcher, trainmaster, assistant superintendent.

In 1942 the U.S. Army sent him to Persia, as a colonel, to unsnarl the rail shipments of U.S. material to the Soviet Union. He did so well that General Eisenhower brought him to England as assistant supply boss for the Normandy invasion, later put him in charge of the First Military Railway Service in France. At war's end, Stoddard quickly moved up to U.P.'s general manager. Last week, when President George F. Ashby retired at 63, U.P.'s Chairman E. Roland Harriman and his fellow directors named Stoddard president.

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